About travel and comfort zone
Why I don’t like the concept of “comfort zone” and how I feel, as a traveler, that I’m searching for my “comfort zone” more that stepping outside it. The main motivation to take a different path, in our lives or in our journeys, should be the curiosity and the hope to find the place that really fits to us, not the urge of challenge ourselves.
These days it seems that every motivational speech or writing about personal growth deal with “stepping out of the comfort zone”. Maybe you don’t know yet but “life begins at the end of your comfort zone”.
Trying to better understand this trending concept, I went to the place where, I think, every research should start: the dictionary. The definition of the word “comfort” is “the pleasant and satisfying feeling of being physically or mentally free from pain and suffering, or something that provides this feeling”. The “comfort zone” is “a psychological state in which thing feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and in control of their environment […] In this zone a steady level of performance is possible”.
Its more clear now, but I still don’t understand why we should put ourselves in a challenging situation to improve the level of “performance” of our lives. Maybe I don’t get it because I’m not a competitive person but I really don’t feel the need to prove to someone or to myself that I’m enough. Life changes, embracing the unknown can be scary and fears should never drive our decisions, so why we should push ourselves to take a risk? Just to prove that we can survive?
I think we should look at the bright side of it. We should be driven by our curiosity and our desire to learn new things, experience new worlds and meet new people. We should stop thinking of the unknown as scary and start thinking at it as surprising, welcoming, open and full of richness for our souls. A territory we’re looking forward to discovering!
Three years ago, I was happy with my life but I really wanted to make myself a present for my 30th birthday so I decided to take a sabbatical year to travel the world. I put in stand-by my very stable job in a big corporate perfectly fitting with my education, and became a solo traveler around the world. I took what we can call a step outside my comfort zone. For me I was just freeing my curiosity. Before the departure, while travelling and once back home, a lot of people told me that I was brave to dare an experience like this and to fight the fear of being in a situation and a world that I didn’t know before. The true is that I didn’t feel brave because, thanks to my optimistic view of the unknown, I was not scared at all! During my travel around the world I found the real comfort, a “pleasant and satisfying feeling” of being at the right place.
I felt brave once I came back to my 8am-5pm job, waiting for weekends, waiting for holidays. It was in that moment that I needed courage, courage to face my old comfort zone. Few months ago, I ran out of courage so I’m taking a break (again) and I’m looking for some comfort (again!). I’m proud to be out of courage, I don’t want to feel brave, I want to be happy. I want to look for my REAL zone of comfort and once I find it, I want to stay there and enjoy!
